NASA says Mars rock pattern reveals ‘potential biosignatures’ : NPR

A very long time in the past, life left microscopic signatures on Mars — or did it? That’s the query NASA scientists have labored for years to reply. On Wednesday, NASA researchers said the reply may be in a rock pattern that “contains potential biosignatures.”

The discovering, revealed Wednesday within the journal Nature, places the company one step nearer to answering considered one of humanity’s most profound questions on life within the universe, mentioned Nicky Fox, affiliate administrator of NASA’s science mission directorate.

“This finding by our incredible Perseverance rover is the closest we’ve actually come to discovering ancient life on Mars. And if you can’t tell, we’re really excited about that,” Fox mentioned throughout a information convention at NASA’s headquarters in Washington.

The thrilling rock pattern in query is dubbed Sapphire Canyon. NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover collected it final summer time from a reddish, vein-filled rock alongside the sting of an historical, quarter-mile huge river valley referred to as Neretva Vallis.

The valley was carved by water flowing into the big Jezero Crater, which additionally held a lake billions of years in the past.

“Jezero was selected because it’s in a location amongst the most ancient terrains on Mars, exposing some of the oldest rocks anywhere in the solar system,” mentioned Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance undertaking scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

“These really ancient rocks provide us a window into a period of time that’s not particularly well represented on our own planet Earth,” she added. “But it’s a time when life was emergent on Earth, and could have been on Mars as well.”

Perseverance landed within the crater in early 2021, with the aim of amassing and analyzing samples that will let researchers research an historical river delta — recognized as a doubtlessly wealthy supply of indicators of historical microbial life.

Then, in July 2024, Perseverance discovered the rock that has tantalized scientists for months. NASA researchers say it has options akin to small black “poppy seed” spots and bigger “leopard spots” — patterns which are usually telltale indicators related to life.

“This is the kind of signature that we would see that was made by something biological,” Fox mentioned. “In this case, it’s kind of the equivalent of seeing leftover fossils … leftovers from a meal. And maybe that meal has been excreted by a microbe. And that’s what we’re seeing in this sample.”

Researchers utilizing the rover’s tools to research the rock’s spots and dots discovered minerals containing iron, phosphorus and sulfur, a Perseverance scientist and lead writer of the research, Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook University in New York, mentioned at Wednesday’s information convention.

What’s thrilling is {that a} mixture of mud and natural matter has reacted to provide these minerals and these textures, Hurowitz mentioned.

“When we see features like this in sediment on Earth,” Hurowitz defined, “these minerals are often the byproduct of microbial metabolisms that are consuming organic matter and making these minerals as a result of those reactions.”

But, he added, there are additionally “nonbiological ways to make these features that we cannot completely rule out” because the trigger with the present knowledge, akin to being heated to extraordinarily excessive temperatures.

The subsequent huge step, Hurowitz and others on the NASA occasion mentioned, can be to research these rocks additional — and in particular person. It can be the primary time a pristine piece of one other planet can be dropped at Earth.

Bringing the core pattern again, NASA researchers wrote within the Nature paper, would allow them to analyze it with specialised, extremely delicate devices that will “determine the origin of the minerals, organics and textures it contains.”

Perseverance has collected 30 samples on Mars thus far, in keeping with NASA, with six empty tubes left unfilled. But the company continues to be engaged on a plan to carry them again.

NASA beforehand laid out plans to land a spacecraft carrying Martian specimens at a U.S. Air Force testing vary in Utah. But such a mission would price billions and take years to finish — and in May, President Trump proposed cutting funding for the Mars Sample Return program, calling it “financially unsustainable.” Earlier this yr, the company mentioned it was weighing two completely different choices for learn how to land and cargo the samples from Mars’ floor.

“We believe there is a better way to do this, a faster way to get these samples back,” performing NASA Administrator Sean Duffy mentioned on Wednesday.

Duffy additionally mentioned that NASA stays dedicated to crewed missions exploring house, as a part of its scientific pursuits.

“So what we do on Mars,” he added, “these missions help us in what we’re going to do in the future as we do go back to the moon and eventually get to Mars.”